The Website home of Karl Bullock

There have been plenty of discussions about how the Bible describes the Earth, especially from the Genesis accounts, and interestingly from Isaiah 40:22, where we're told that "[God] sits above the circle of the earth". You can find all those discussions in various literature. But, there is a verse from the New Testament, and from Jesus Himself, that gives us a pretty good indication that Jesus already knew how big the earth was, because, well, He was involved in its creation.

In Luke 17:34-37, Jesus is describing to His disciples the future event where He calls His children up from this Earth into His presence. We describe this event as the "Rapture" (from the Latin word "rapio",which means to seize or snatch up, or to move from one place to another). Paul also speaks of this being "caught up" in I Thessalonians 4:17, but in Luke 17, read what Jesus told his followers:

"I tell you, that in one that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two men shall be in the field; the one taken, and the other left."

This describes at least two periods in the same day - indeed, in the same moment. Women are grinding, men are working in the fields, and men are sleeping. It's daylight in at least two of these places, and night in the other. Daily grinding - the processing of grain into flour, then into bread - was done very early in the day. Men working in the fields would be done at varying times of the day, or essentially all day long, depending on the type of field and crop. Men sleeping, of course, would occur at night. This means there's at least a 12-hour differential between the earliest and latest of these activities. A 12 hour differential could only occur at opposites sides of the face of the earth. The implication here is that when the Rapture occurs, it will be early in the morning in some places, the main part of the day in others, and in the last example, sometime during the night.

The point, then, is that Jesus Himself indicated that the earth was large enough for the Rapture event to simultaneously occur in the early part of the day, the middle of the day, and at night. In other words, all over the world, no matter where these occupants might be, AND that there would be at least a 12 hour difference between the locations. Simple math yields an area at least 4,000 miles from sunrise to sunset, and more than that to get into darkest night.

Now, while that wasn't the point of Luke 17, it is an interesting byproduct of Jesus' description of the Rapture. It's a big earth - and as we now know, most of it had not yet been discovered (at least the part after the Great Flood)!